The Times:
Why boys, football and exams are an unfortunate mix
4 June 2018
We should also worry about our rather odd exam system. To have high stakes national exams at the age of 16 — GCSEs — is relatively unusual by international standards. It is easy to understand their history: most young people used to leave school at 16, and some measure of attainment at that point made sense. Few now leave at 16. All are supposed to be in some form of education until they are 18. GCSEs have become just one more sorting mechanism. And as some recent work by economists at the London School of Economics has demonstrated, they sort in a way that can be really quite damaging. Using data on the precise marks that students got at GCSE English, the researchers were able to look at the impact of just getting a C grade as opposed to just missing a C grade — literally the impact of getting a single additional mark. The results are disturbing. Missing a C grade in English language by a tiny fraction decreases the probability of enrolling in a higher-level qualification by at least 9 percentage points, with a similar effect on the probability of getting A levels or equivalent by the age of 19. This in turn affects the chances of getting into university and of getting a job with decent progression prospects, and so on. All for the want of a single mark in a single exam aged 16.
Related publications
‘Entry through the narrow door: the costs of just failing high stakes exams’, Stephen Machin, Sandra McNally and Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela, CVER Discussion Paper No.014, April 2018